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Gen. Shelton warns against long-term U.S. deployments

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Tuesday, January 25, 2000

WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff has warned against long-term deployment of U.S. troops abroad as White House officials continue to review plans to send peacekeeping forces to the Golan Heights as part of any Israeli-Syrian treaty.

Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the chairman of the joint chiefs, did not mention the Golan Heights during his speech last week at Harvard University. But it was his clearest warning against the prospect of renewed U.S. military commitments that could endanger American troops abroad or reduce the Pentagon's concept to be able to fight a two-front war.

"The military makes a great hammer in America's foreign policy toolbox, but not every problem that we face is a nail," Shelton said on Wednesday.

The assertion came two days before a poll commissioned by the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs reported that most Americans oppose the sending of U.S. troops to the Golan Heights to monitor a peace treaty.

Shelton listed what he termed as the principles for the deployment of U.S. troops abroad. He said such a mission should be brief and present minimal danger to American soldiers.

The U.S. military chief cited Rwanda and Turkey in which American troops were sent to deal with disasters or humanitarian relief efforts. "They should be designed to give the affected country the opportunity to restore its own basic services," he said. "At the same time, we have got to ensure these efforts should not jeopardize our ability to respond to direct threats to our national security in other regions of the world."

The United States maintains several hundred troops in the Sinai desert to monitor the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. But the United States has not sent soldiers to the Levant since 1983, when some 250 soldiers were killed in attacks by pro-Syrian elements around Beirut.

Pentagon sources said many officials dealing with the Middle East both in the Defense Department and the military are wary of the prospect of thousands of U.S. troops being deployed in Syria or Lebanon. They pointed to the 1998 anti-U.S. riots in Damascus in which Syrian forces failed to stop the demonstrators from storming the U.S. Embassy.

"There is very little trust of Syria here," a Pentagon official said. "Many of us approach the prospect of Syria being transformed into a pro-Western nation with great skepticism."

Shelton stressed the importance of the support by the American people to send troops abroad. He said each decision must withstand what he called the "Dover test," a reference to the Delaware air force base that receives the bodies of service members killed in action.

"We have to ask the question, 'Is the American public prepared for the sight of our most precious resources coming home in flag-draped caskets into Dover Air Force Base?'" Shelton said.

The U.S. military chief stressed that he did not oppose the use of American military force or contribution to an international peacekeeping effort. But he warned that in some places of the world the U.S. soldiers might find themselves lodged among an array of hostile forces.

"We may find out that sorting out the good guys from the bad is not as easy as it seems," he said. "We may find that getting in is much easier than getting out. I think that these are the types of issues that we should confront up front before making a decision on whether to commit our military forces."

Tuesday, January 25, 2000


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